United News of Bangladesh

When Alexei Navalny turns 47 on Sunday, he'll wake up in a bare concrete cell with hardly any natural light. He won't be able to see or talk to any of his loved ones. Phone calls and visits are banned for those in "punishment isolation" cells, a 2-by-3-meter (6 1/2-by-10-foot) space. Guards usually blast patriotic songs and speeches by President Vladimir Putin at him. "Guess who is the champion of listening to Putin's speeches? Who listens to them for hours and falls asleep to them?" Navalny said recently in a typically sardonic social media post via his attorneys from Penal Colony No. 6 in the Vladimir region east of Moscow. He is serving a nine-year term due to end in 2030 on charges widely seen as trumped up, and is facing another trial on new charges that could keep him locked up for another two decades. Rallies have been called for Sunday in Russia to support him. Navalny has become Russia's most famous political prisoner — and not just because of his prominence as Putin's fiercest political foe, his poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin, and his being the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary. He has chronicled his arbitrary placement in isolation, where he has spent almost six months. He's on a meager prison diet, restricted on how much time he can spend writing letters and forced at times to live with a cellmate with poor personal hygiene, making life even more miserable. Most of the attention goes to Navalny and other high-profile figures like Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced last month to 25 years on treason charges. But there's a growing number of less-famous prisoners who are serving time in similarly harsh conditions. Memorial, Russia's oldest and most prominent human rights organization and a 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, counted 558 political prisoners in the country as of April — more than three times the figure than in 2018, when it listed 183. The Soviet Union's far-flung gulag system of prison camps provided inmate labor to develop industries such as mining and logging. While conditions vary among modern-day penal colonies, Russian law still permits prisoners to work on jobs like sewing uniforms for soldiers. In a 2021 report, the U.S. State Department said conditions in Russian prisons and detention centers "were often harsh and life threatening. Overcrowding, abuse by guards and inmates, limited access to health care, food shortages and inadequate sanitation were common in prisons, penal colonies, and other detention facilities." Andrei Pivovarov, an opposition figure sentenced last year to four years in prison, has been in isolation at Penal Colony No. 7 in northern Russia's Karelia region since January and is likely to stay there the rest of this year, said his partner, Tatyana Usmanova. The institution is notorious for its harsh conditions and reports of torture. The 41-year-old former head of the pro-democracy group Open Russia spends his days alone in a small cell in a "strict detention" unit, and is not allowed any calls or visits from anyone but his lawyers, Usmanova told The Associated Press. He can get one book from the prison library, can write letters for several hours a day and is permitted 90 minutes outdoors, she said. Other inmates are prohibited from making eye contact with Pivovarov in the corridors, contributing to his "maximum isolation," she said. "It wasn't enough to sentence him to a real prison term. They are also trying to ruin his life there," Usmanova added. Pivovarov was pulled off a Warsaw-bound flight just before takeoff from St. Petersburg in May 2021 and taken to the southern city of Krasnodar. Authorities accused him of engaging with an "undesirable" organization -– a crime since 2015. Several days before his arrest, Open Russia had disbanded after getting the "undesirable" label. After his trial in Krasnodar, the St. Petersburg native was convicted and sentenced in July, when Russia's war in Ukraine and Putin's sweeping crackdown on dissent were in full swing. He told AP in a letter from Krasnodar in December that authorities moved him there "to hide me farther away" from his hometown and Moscow. That interview was one of the last Pivovarov was able to give, describing prison life there as "boring and depressing," with his only diversion being an hour-long walk in a small yard. "Lucky" inmates with cash in their accounts can shop at a prison store once a week for 10 minutes but otherwise must stay in their cells, he wrote. Letters from supporters lift his spirits, he said. Many people wrote that they used to be uninterested in Russian politics, according to Pivovarov, and "only now are starting to see clearly." Now, any letters take weeks to arrive, Usmanova said. Conditions are easier for some less-famous political prisoners like Alexei Gorinov, a former member of a Moscow municipal council. He was was convicted of "spreading false information" about the army in July over antiwar remarks he made at a council session. Criticism of the invasion was criminalized a few months earlier, and Gorinov, 61, became the first Russian sent to prison for it, receiving seven years. He is housed in barracks with about 50 others in his unit at Penal Colony No. 2 in the Vladimir region, Gorinov said in written answers passed to AP in March. The long sentence for a low-profile activist shocked many, and Gorinov said "authorities needed an example they could showcase to others (of) an ordinary person, rather than a public figure." Inmates in his unit can watch TV, and play chess, backgammon or table tennis. There's a small kitchen to brew tea or coffee between meals, and they can have food from personal supplies. But Gorinov said prison officials still carry out "enhanced control" of the unit, and he and two other inmates get special checks every two hours, since they've been labeled "prone to escape." There is little medical help, he said. "Right now, I'm not feeling all that well, as I can't recover from bronchitis," he said, adding that he needed treatment for pneumonia last winter at another prison's hospital ward, because at Penal Colony No. 2, the most they can do is "break a fever." Also suffering health problems is artist and musician Sasha Skochilenko, who is detained amid her ongoing trial following her April 2022 arrest in St. Petersburg, also on charges of spreading false information about the army. Her crime was replacing supermarket price tags with antiwar slogans in protest. Skochilenko has a congenital heart defect and celiac disease, requiring a gluten-free diet. She gets food parcels weekly, but there is a weight limit, and the 32-year-old can't eat "half the things they give her there," said her partner, Sophia Subbotina. There's a stark difference between detention facilities for women and men, and Skochilenko has it easier in some ways than male prisoners, Subbotina said. "Oddly enough, the staff are mostly nice. Mostly they are women, they are quite friendly, they will give helpful tips and they have a very good attitude toward Sasha," Subbotina told AP by phone. "Often they support Sasha, they tell her: 'You will definitely get out of here soon, this is so unfair here.' They know about our relationship and they are fine with it. They're very humane," she said. There's no political propaganda in the jail and dance music blares from a radio. Cooking shows play on TV. Skochilenko "wouldn't watch them in normal life, but in jail, it's a distraction," Subbotina said. She recently arranged for an outside cardiologist to examine Skochilneko and since March has been allowed to visit her twice a month. Subbotina gets emotional when she recalled their first visit. "It is a complex and weird feeling when you've been living with a person. Sasha and I have been together for over six years — waking up with them, falling asleep with them — then not being able to see them for a year," she said. "I was nervous when I went to visit her. I didn't know what I would say to Sasha, but in the end, it went really well." Still, Subbotina said a year behind bars has been hard on Skochilenko. The trial is moving slowly, unlike usually swift proceedings for high-profile political activists, with guilty verdicts almost a certainty. Skochilenko faces up to 10 years if convicted.

A senior United Arab Emirates official says the Gulf nation wants the U.N. climate summit it's hosting later this year to deliver "game-changing results" for international efforts to curb global warming, but doing so will require having the fossil fuel industry at the table. Environmental campaigners have slammed the presence of oil and gas lobbyists at previous rounds of talks, warning that their interests are opposed to the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions — caused to a large degree by the burning of fossil fuels. Last month scores of U.S. and European lawmakers called for the summit's designated chair, Sultan al-Jaber, to be replaced over his links to the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. The issue complicates already-delicate negotiations ahead of the Nov. 30 - Dec. 12 meeting in Dubai, known as COP28. Preliminary talks starting next week in Bonn, Germany, will show whether the incoming UAE presidency can overcome skepticism among parties and civil society groups about its ability to shepherd almost 200 nations toward a landmark deal. "Our leadership have been very clear to me and our team and our president that they don't want just another COP that's incremental," said Majid al-Suwaidi, who as director-general of the summit plays a key role in the diplomatic negotiations. "They want a COP that is going to deliver real, big, game-changing results because they see, just like all of us, that we're not on track to achieve the goals of Paris." Governments agreed eight years ago in the French capital to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) — ideally no more than 1.5C (2.7F). With average global temperatures already about 1.2C (2.2F) above pre-industrial levels, experts say the window to meet the more ambitious target is closing fast and even the less stringent goal would be missed if emissions aren't slashed sharply soon. "We need to have everybody at the table discussing with us about how to deliver that," al-Suwaidi told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. "We need to have oil and gas, we need to have industry, we need to have aviation, we need to have shipping, we need to have all the hard to abate sectors," he said, adding: "We need all those who can to deliver what they can, regardless of who they are." Al-Suwaidi pushed back against the idea that the fossil fuel industry would undermine meaningful talks on emissions cuts the way they have done in the past through disinformation campaigns and keeping quiet their own knowledge about climate change. "There's no doubt in my mind that the position of the sector has completely changed and that they are engaging with us in an active conversation," he said. Asked whether the talks might consider a phaseout of fossil fuels, proposed last year by nations most vulnerable to climate change, al-Suwaidi said the presidency wouldn't preclude such conversations. "We welcome any kind of discussion," the UAE's former ambassador to Spain said. "But the parties are the ones who will decide what that discussion is and where we land." So far, the summit's designated chair al-Jaber has emphasized the need to cut emissions, rather than end fossil fuel use itself. It's prompted fears that he might seek loopholes for untested carbon-capture technologies and so-called offsets — both aimed at reducing current levels of carbon dioxide in the air — that experts say distract from the need to end the release of greenhouse gases. A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier this year called for a nearly two-thirds cut in carbon emissions by 2035, warning that failure to do so greatly increases the risk of droughts, flooding, sea-level rise and other short- and long-term disasters. Al-Suwaidi, who also has a background in the oil and gas sector, said the UAE leadership is acutely aware of the existential threat global warming poses — including to their own sun-rich but water-poor nation — and is committed to shifting from fossil fuels toward renewable energy such as wind and solar. "We want to be part of this new economy," he said. "We're a country that's running head first into this future." Al-Suwaidi said agreeing a global goal for ramping up renewable energy in Dubai could send a positive message to those anxious about the transformation required to stop climate change. "Rather than talking about what we're stopping people from doing, let's talk about how we're helping them to take up solutions ... that are going to help us to address the emissions problem we have," he said. The talks in Dubai will also see countries conduct the first 'global stocktake' of efforts to tackle climate change since Paris in 2015. The results are meant to inform a new round of commitments by nations to cut emissions and address the impacts of global warming. Poor nations are also demanding rich countries make good on pledges for vast financial support, an issue that has often caused major disagreements at past meetings. "We need the developing world to leapfrog into this new climate system and we need to support that transition for them," said al-Suwaidi. "Finance is going to be really fundamental at COP28." This will require rich countries, including the Group of Seven major economies, who are historically responsible for a large chunk of global emissions, to step up, he said. "They have the technology. They have the know-how. They have the financial ability. We need them to take that leadership role and show us seriousness about addressing this challenge."

Regulation of the space has become urgent as Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered spyware and disinformation is on the rise, according to UN-appointed independent rights experts. The Human Rights Council-appointed experts in a statement on Friday said that new technologies, such as artificial intelligence-based biometric surveillance systems, are increasingly being used "in sensitive contexts" without people's knowledge or consent.  “Urgent and strict regulatory red lines are needed for technologies that claim to perform emotion or gender recognition,” said the experts, who include Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism. They condemned the already “alarming” use and impacts of spyware and surveillance technologies on the work of human rights defenders and journalists, “often under the guise of national security and counter-terrorism measures”. They also called for regulation to address the lightning-fast development of generative AI that’s enabling mass production of fake online content which spreads disinformation and hate speech. The experts emphasized the need to take precautions to make sure that these systems do not expose individuals and communities to more human rights abuses, including through the expansion and abuse of intrusive surveillance practices that violate the right to privacy, enable the commission of serious human rights abuses, such as forced disappearances, and facilitate discrimination. They also expressed concern about respect for freedoms of expression, thought, peaceful protest, and for access to essential economic, social and cultural rights, and humanitarian services. “Specific technologies and applications should be avoided altogether where the regulation of human rights complaints is not possible,” the experts said. “Regulation is urgently needed to ensure transparency, alert people when they encounter synthetic media, and inform the public about the training data and models used,” the experts said. The experts reiterated their calls for caution about digital technology use in the context of humanitarian crises, from large-scale data collection – including the collection of highly sensitive biometric data – to the use of advanced targeted surveillance technologies. “We urge restraint in the use of such measures until the broader human rights implications are fully understood and robust data protection safeguards are in place,” they said. Special Rapporteurs and other rights experts are all appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, are mandated to monitor and report on specific thematic issues or country situations, are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.  

Rescuers waded through piles of debris and wreckage to pull out bodies and free people after two passenger trains derailed Friday night in India, killing more than 230 people and leaving hundreds of others trapped inside more than a dozen mangled rail cars, in one of the country's deadliest train crashes in decades. The accident, which happened about 220 kilometers (137 miles) southwest of Kolkata, led to a chaotic scene as rescuers climbed atop the wrecked trains to break open doors and windows using cutting torches to free survivors. About 900 people were injured in the accident in Balasore district in the eastern state of Odisha, said P.K. Jena, the state's top administrative official. The cause was under investigation. Ten to 12 coaches of one train derailed, and debris from some of the mangled coaches fell onto a nearby track, said Amitabh Sharma, a railroad ministry spokesperson. The debris was hit by another passenger train coming from the opposite direction, causing up to three coaches of the second train to also derail, Sharma said. Also read: Passenger train derails in India, killing at least 50 and trapping many others A third train carrying freight was also involved, the Press Trust of India reported, but there was no immediate confirmation from railroad authorities. PTI said some of the derailed passenger coaches hit cars from the freight train. The death toll rose steadily throughout the night. As dawn approached on Saturday, Jena said that at least 233 people were dead. In the aftermath, scores of dead bodies lay on the ground near the train tracks covered by white sheets, as locals and rescuers raced to help survivors. Television footage on Saturday morning showed teams of rescuers and police sifting through the ruins as the search operation carried on. Scores of people also showed up at a local hospital to donate blood. Officials said 1,200 rescuers worked with 115 ambulances, 50 buses and 45 mobile health units through the night at the accident site. Saturday was declared as a day of mourning in the state. Villagers said they rushed to the site to evacuate people after hearing a loud sound created by the train coaches going off the tracks. "The local people really went out on a limb to help us. They not only helped in pulling out people, but retrieved our luggage and got us water," PTI cited Rupam Banerjee, a survivor, as saying. Passenger Vandana Kaleda said that inside the train during the derailment people were "falling on each other" as her coach shook violently and veered off the tracks. "As I stepped out of the washroom, suddenly the train tilted. I lost my balance. ... Everything went topsy turvy. People started falling on each other and I was shocked and could not understand what happened. My mind stopped working," she said, adding she felt lucky to survive. Another survivor who did not give his name said he was sleeping when the impact woke him up. He said he saw other passengers with broken limbs and disfigured faces. The derailed Coromandel Express was traveling from Howrah in West Bengal state to Chennai, the capital of southern Tamil Nadu state, PTI said. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his thoughts were with the bereaved families. "May the injured recover soon," tweeted Modi, who said he had spoken to the railway minister and that "all possible assistance" was being offered. Despite government efforts to improve rail safety, several hundred accidents occur every year on India's railways, the largest train network under one management in the world. In August 1995, two trains collided near New Delhi, killing 358 people in one of the worst train accidents in India in decades. In 2016, a passenger train slid off the tracks between the cities of Indore and Patna, killing 146 people. Most train accidents are blamed on human error or outdated signaling equipment. More than 12 million people ride 14,000 trains across India every day, traveling on 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) of track.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that a cease-fire in the war in Ukraine could not be declared unless it was part of a “just and lasting” peace deal that included Russia’s military withdrawal. Blinken said that “a cease-fire that simply freezes current lines in place" and allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin "to consolidate control over the territory he has seized, and rest, rearm, and reattack — that is not a just and lasting peace.” Russia must also pay a share of Ukraine’s reconstruction and be held accountable for launching its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, Blinken said in a speech during a visit to Finland, which recently joined NATO and shares a long border with Russia. Allowing Moscow to keep the one-fifth of Ukrainian territory it had occupied would send the wrong message to Russia and to “other would-be aggressors around the world,” according to Blinken. Russia, however, wants any talks to address Ukraine’s request to join NATO. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pushed for the country's membership in the Western military alliance that the Kremlin sees as a threat. “Naturally, this (issue) will be one of the main irritants and potential problems for many, many years to come,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday. Blinken said Washington was ready to support peace efforts by other countries, including recent overtures from China and Brazil. But any peace agreement must uphold the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence. The United States is a leading Western ally and supplier of arms to Kyiv to help it push back against the Kremlin's forces. China, which says it is neutral and wants to serve as a mediator but has supported Moscow politically, on Friday urged countries to stop sending weapons to Ukraine. In Kyiv, air defenses shot down more than 30 Russian cruise missiles and drones Friday in Moscow's sixth air attack in six days, local officials said. The Ukrainian capital was simultaneously attacked from different directions by Iranian-made Shahed drones and cruise missiles from the Caspian region, senior Kyiv official Serhii Popko wrote on Telegram. A 68-year-old man and an 11-year-old child were wounded in the attack, with private houses, outbuildings and cars sustaining damage from falling debris, according to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office. A recent spate of attacks on the capital has put strain on residents and tested the strength of Ukraine's air defenses while Kyiv officials plot what they say is an upcoming counteroffensive to push back the Kremlin's forces 15 months after their full-scale invasion. Kyiv was the target of drone and missile attacks on 17 days last month, including daylight attacks. Moscow's strategy could backfire, however, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. The air campaign aims to "degrade Ukrainian counteroffensive capabilities, but ... the Russian prioritization of Kyiv is likely further limiting the campaign’s ability to meaningfully constrain potential Ukrainian counteroffensive actions,” it said in an assessment late Thursday. Ukrainian air defenses intercepted all 15 cruise missiles and 21 attack drones targeted at Kyiv on Thursday night, Ukraine’s chief of staff, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said. Ukraine's presidential office said Friday that at least four civilians were killed and 42 wounded over the previous 24 hours. The Moscow-appointed governor of Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk province, Denis Pushilin, claimed Friday that three people had been killed and four wounded, including a 3-year-old-girl, by Ukrainian strikes on the region. The previous day, Ukraine said a 9-year-old and her mother were killed in Kyiv by a Russian pre-dawn missile barrage. Meanwhile, border regions of Russia once again came under fire from Ukraine. Recent cross-border raids have also rattled those regions of Russia and put the Kremlin on guard. That could be a Ukrainian strategy to disperse Russian forces before a counteroffensive begins. “Russian commanders now face an acute dilemma of whether to (strengthen) defenses in Russia’s border regions or reinforce their lines in occupied Ukraine,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense said Friday. Air defense systems shot down “several Ukrainian drones” overnight Thursday in Russia’s southern Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, regional Gov. Roman Starovoit wrote on Telegram. In the neighboring Bryansk region, which also borders Ukraine, regional Gov. Alexander Bogomaz said that Ukrainian forces shelled two villages on Friday morning. No casualties were reported. Two drones also attacked energy facilities in Russia’s western Smolensk region, which borders Belarus, in the early hours of Friday, officials said.  

“That '70s Show” star Danny Masterson was led out in handcuffs from a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday and could get 30 years to life in prison after a jury found him guilty on two of three counts of rape at his second trial, in which the Church of Scientology played a central role. Masterson's wife, actor and model Bijou Phillips, gasped when the verdict was read and wept as he was taken into custody, while a group of family and friends who sat stone-faced behind him throughout both trials. The jury of seven women and five men reached the verdict after deliberating for seven days spread over two weeks. They could not reach a verdict on the third count, that alleged Masterson raped a longtime girlfriend. They had voted 8-4 in favor of conviction. Masterson, 47, will be held without bail until he is sentenced. No sentencing date has yet been set, but the judge told Masterson and his lawyers to return to court Aug. 4 for a hearing. “I am experiencing a complex array of emotions — relief, exhaustion, strength, sadness — knowing that my abuser, Danny Masterson, will face accountability for his criminal behavior,” one of the women, whom Masterson knew as a fellow member of the church and was convicted of raping at his home in 2003, said in a statement. A second woman, a former girlfriend, whose count left the jury deadlocked, said in the statement: “While I’m encouraged that Danny Masterson will face some criminal punishment, I am devastated that he has dodged criminal accountability for his heinous conduct against me.” A spokesperson for Masterson declined comment, but his attorneys will almost certainly appeal. After a deadlocked jury led to a mistrial in December, prosecutors retried Masterson, saying he forcibly raped three women in his Hollywood Hills home between 2001 and 2003. They told jurors he drugged the women’s drinks so he could rape them. They said he used his prominence in the church — where all three women were also members at the time — to avoid consequences for decades. “We want to express our gratitude to the three women who came forward and bravely shared their experiences," Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement after the verdict Wednesday. "Their courage and strength have been an inspiration to us all.” Masterson did not testify, and his lawyers called no witnesses. The defense argued that the acts were consensual, and attempted to discredit the women’s stories by highlighting changes and inconsistencies over time, which they said showed signs of coordination between them. “If you decide that a witness deliberately lied about something in this case,” defense attorney Philip Cohen told jurors, going through their instructions in his closing argument, “You should consider not believing anything that witness says.” The Church of Scientology played a significant role in the first trial but arguably an even larger one in the second. Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo allowed expert testimony on church policy from a former official in Scientology leadership who has become a prominent opponent. Tensions ran high in the courtroom between current and former Scientologists, and even leaked into testimony, with the accusers saying on the stand that they felt intimidated by some members in the room. Actor Leah Remini, a former member who has become the church’s highest-profile critic, sat in on the trial at times, putting her arm around one of the accusers to comfort her during closing arguments. Remini said on Twitter that the two guilty verdicts in the retrial are “a relief. The women who survived Danny Masterson’s predation are heroes. For years, they and their families have faced vicious attacks and harassment from Scientology and Danny’s well-funded legal team," she posted. "Nevertheless, they soldiered on, determined to seek justice.” The alleged harassment, which the church denies engaging in, is the subject of a civil lawsuit filed by two of the accusers. Founded in 1953 by L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology has many members who work in Hollywood. The judge kept limits on how much prosecutors could talk about the church, and primarily allowed it to explain why the women took so long to go to authorities. The women testified that when they reported Masterson to church officials, they were told they were not raped, were put through ethics programs themselves, and were warned against going to law enforcement to report a member of such high standing. “They were raped, they were punished for it, and they were retaliated against,” Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller told jurors in his closing argument. “Scientology told them there’s no justice for them. You have the opportunity to show them there is justice.” The church vehemently denied having any policy that forbids members from going to secular authorities. Next week the judge who oversaw the criminal case will hold a hearing to determine how a lawyer who represents the Church of Scientology had evidence that the prosecution had shared with the defense. The evidence involved links that the lawyer accidentally included in an email to Mueller. The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they’ve been sexually abused. Testimony in this case was graphic and emotional. The two women whose testimony led to Masterson's conviction said that in 2003, he gave them drinks and that they then became woozy or passed out before he violently raped them. He knew both from social circles in the church. The third, Masterson’s then-girlfriend of five years whose count left the jury deadlocked, said she awoke to find him raping her, and had to pull his hair to stop him. The issue of drugging also played a major role in the retrial. At the first, Olmedo only allowed prosecutors and accusers to describe their disorientation, and to imply that they were drugged. The second time, they were allowed to argue it directly, and the prosecution attempted to make it a major factor, to no avail. “The defendant drugs his victims to gain control,” Deputy District Attorney Ariel Anson said in her closing argument. “He does this to take away his victims’ ability to consent.” Masterson was not charged with any counts of drugging, and there is no toxicology evidence to back up the assertion. His attorney asked for a mistrial over the issue’s inclusion. The motion was denied, but the issue is likely to be a major factor in any potential appeal. These charges date to a period when Masterson was at the height of his fame, starring from 1998 until 2006 as Steven Hyde on Fox’s “That ’70s Show” — the show that made stars of Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace. Masterson had reunited with Kutcher on the 2016 Netflix comedy “The Ranch,” but was written off the show when an LAPD investigation was revealed in December 2017.

Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into "the danger zone," not just for an overheating planet that's losing its natural areas, but for the well-being of people living on it, according to a new study. The study looks not just at guardrails for the planetary ecosystem but for the first time it includes measures of "justice," which is mostly about preventing harm for countries, ethnicities and genders. The study by the international scientist group Earth Commission published in Wednesday's journal Nature looks at climate, air pollution, phosphorus and nitrogen contamination of water from fertilizer overuse, groundwater supplies, fresh surface water, the unbuilt natural environment and the overall natural and human-built environment. Only air pollution wasn't quite at the danger point globally. Air pollution is dangerous at local and regional levels, while climate was beyond the harmful levels for humans in groups but not quite past the safety guideline for the planet as a system, the study from the Swedish group said. The study found "hotspots" of problem areas throughout Eastern Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa and much of Brazil, Mexico, China and some of the U.S. West — much of it from climate change. About two-thirds of Earth don't meet the criteria for freshwater safety, scientists said as an example. "We are in a danger zone for most of the Earth system boundaries," said study co-author Kristie Ebi, a professor of climate and public health at the University of Washington. If planet Earth just got an annual check-up, similar to a person's physical, "our doctor would say that the Earth is really quite sick right now and it is sick in terms of many different areas or systems and this sickness is also affecting the people living on Earth," Earth Commission co-chair Joyeeta Gupta, a professor of environment at the University of Amsterdam, said at a press conference. It's not a terminal diagnosis. The planet can recover if it changes, including its use of coal, oil and natural gas and the way it treats the land and water, the scientists said. But "we are moving in the wrong direction on basically all of these," said study lead author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. "This is a compelling and provocative paper – scientifically sound in methodology and important for identifying the dimensions in which the planet is nearing the edge of boundaries that would launch us into irreversible states," Indy Burke, dean of the Yale School of the Environment said in an email. She wasn't part of the study. The team of about 40 scientists created quantifiable boundaries for each environmental category, both for what's safe for the planet and for the point at which it becomes harmful for groups of people, which the researchers termed a justice issue. Rockstrom said he thinks of those points as setting up "a safety fence'' outside of which the risks become higher, but not necessarily fatal. Rockstrom and other scientists have attempted in the past this type of holistic measuring of Earth's various interlocking ecosystems. The big difference in this attempt is that scientists also looked at local and regional levels and they added the element of justice. The justice part includes fairness between young and old generations, different nations and even different species. Frequently, it applies to conditions that harm people more than the planet. An example of that is climate change. The report uses the same boundary of 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times that international leaders agreed upon in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The world has so far warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit), so it hasn't crossed that safety fence, Rockstrom and Gupta said, but that doesn't mean people aren't being hurt. "What we are trying to show through our paper is that event at 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) there is a huge amount of damage taking place," Gupta said, pointing to tens of millions of people exposed to extreme hot temperatures. The planetary safety guardrail of 1.5 degrees hasn't been breached, but the "just" boundary where people are hurt of 1 degree has been. "Sustainability and justice are inseparable," said Stanford environmental studies chief Chris Field, who wasn't part of the research. He said he would want even more stringent boundaries. "Unsafe conditions do not need to cover a large fraction of Earth's area to be unacceptable, especially if the unsafe conditions are concentrated in and near poor and vulnerable communities." Another outside expert, Dr. Lynn Goldman, an environment health professor and dean of George Washington University's public health school, said the study was "kind of bold," but she wasn't optimistic that it would result in much action.  

Hundreds of ethnic Serbs on Wednesday gathered in a town in northern Kosovo, days after clashes that injured 30 soldiers from a NATO-led peacekeeping force and over 50 Serbs, provoking fears of a renewal of the region's bloody conflicts and prompting the Western military alliance to send in additional troops. The Serbs reiterated that they want the Kosovo special police and ethnic Albanian officials they call "fake" mayors to withdraw from northern Kosovo. The crowd then spread a huge Serbian flag. Wednesday's protest outside the city hall in Zvecan, 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of the capital, Pristina, was peaceful as of late morning. On Monday, ethnic Serbs tried to storm municipal offices and fought with both Kosovo police and the peacekeepers. Serbs are a minority in Kosovo, but a majority in parts of the country's north bordering Serbia. Many reject the Albanian-majority territory's claim of independence from Serbia. A former province of Serbia, Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence is also not recognized by Belgrade. The United States and the European Union recently have stepped up efforts to solve the dispute as the war rages in Ukraine. NATO said it will send 700 more troops to northern Kosovo to help quell violent protests after the clashes on Monday. The NATO-led peacekeeping mission, KFOR, currently consists of almost 3,800 troops. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged "all parties to take immediate actions to de-escalate tensions." Blinken described violence against soldiers from the multinational force known as KFOR as "unacceptable." The confrontation first unfolded last week after ethnic Albanian officials, who were elected in a vote that Serbs overwhelmingly boycotted, entered municipal buildings to take office with an escort of Kosovo police. When Serbs tried to block the officials, Kosovo police fired tear gas to disperse them. In Zvecan on Monday, angry Serbs again clashed first with the police and later with NATO-led troops who tried to secure the area. Serbia put the country's military on its highest state of alert and sent more troops to the border with Kosovo. While Washington and most EU nations recognize Kosovo's statehood, Belgrade has the backing of Russia and China in rejecting it. Western officials have sharply criticized both Kosovo's authorities for pushing to install the newly-elected mayors, and Serbs because of the violence. "The Government of Kosovo's decision to force access to municipal buildings sharply and unnecessarily escalated tensions," said Blinken. He urged Kosovo to use alternate locations for the new mayors and withdraw police from the vicinity of the municipal buildings. Serbia, he said, should lower its army's alert level and make sure KFOR troops are not attacked. "Both Kosovo and Serbia should immediately recommit to engaging in the EU-facilitated Dialogue to normalize relations," said Blinken. Serbia's Defense Minister on Wednesday told the state broadcaster RTS that the "security situation is highly risky because of one-sided, illegal, illegitimate decisions by the administration in Pristina." "First of all, we should name it properly and try to define it as an occupation of the north of Kosovo by the Albanian administration in Pristina," said Vucevic. Serbian officials have repeatedly warned that Serbia would not stand idle if Serbs in Kosovo come under attack. The 1998-1999 war in Kosovo erupted when ethnic Albanian separatists launched a rebellion against Serbia, which responded with a brutal crackdown. The war ended after NATO bombing forced Serbia to pull out of the territory, and paved the way for the deployment of NATO-led peacekeepers.

Chinese President Xi Jinping recently wrote back to Bangladeshi child Alifa Chin, encouraging her to study hard, pursue her dream and carry forward the traditional friendship between China and Bangladesh. Noting that Chin's story shared in the letter is a good example of the friendship between the two countries, Xi said that since ancient times, the Chinese and the Bangladeshi have been close neighbors and good friends, whose friendly exchanges date back over a thousand years. More than 600 years ago, Zheng He, a Chinese navigator of the Ming Dynasty, sailed twice to Bangladesh, sowing the seeds of friendship between the two peoples, the Chinese president said. Over 600 years later, during a friendship and humanitarian voyage of "The Peace Ark," a China's navy hospital ship, a Chinese female military doctor helped Chin's mother get through a dangerous time and give birth to her in Chittagong. And Chin's father named her after the Bangladeshi word for China. It is a very touching story of friendship between China and Bangladesh, Xi said. The Chinese president said he is very glad to know that Chin wants to be a China-Bangladesh friendship messenger when she grows up, and wishes to study at a medical school in China in the future so that she can save lives just like her "Chinese mother." Expressing his hope that Chin will make best use of her youthful years and study hard to make her dream come true, Xi said that by then she will be able to give back to her family, contribute to the society, and serve her country. As the World Children's Day is coming, Xi said he wishes Chin good health, a happy family and every success at school. When Chin was born in 2010, her mother suffered from a difficult delivery due to a severe heart problem. At that time, "The Peace Ark," the visiting hospital ship, received help and immediately sent military doctors to the local hospital to perform a caesarean section under great pressure. Finally, the mother and daughter were safe. To show gratitude, the father named the baby "Chin," which means "China" in Bengali. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday the "time is now" for Turkey to drop its objections to Sweden joining NATO but said the Biden administration also believed that Turkey should be provided with upgraded F-16 fighters "as soon as possible." Blinken maintained that the administration had not linked the two issues but acknowledged that some U.S. lawmakers had. President Joe Biden implicitly linked the two issues in a phone call to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday. "I spoke to Erdogan and he still wants to work on something on the F-16s. I told him we wanted a deal with Sweden. So let's get that done," Biden said. Also Read: Finland could join NATO ahead of Sweden: Defense minister Still, Blinken insisted the two issues were distinct. However, he stressed that the completion of both would dramatically strengthen European security. "Both of these are vital, in our judgement, to European security," Blinken told reporters at a joint news conference in the northern Swedish city of Lulea with Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. "We believe that both should go forward as quickly as possible; that is to say Sweden's accession and moving forward on the F-16 package more broadly." "We believe the time is now," Blinken said. He declined to predict when Turkey and Hungary, the only other NATO member not yet to have ratified Sweden's membership, would grant their approval. But, he said, "we have no doubt that it can be, it should be, and we expect it to be" completed by the time alliance leaders meet in Vilnius, Lithuania in July at an annual summit. Also Read: Erdogan might approve Finland’s NATO bid, ‘shock’ Sweden Fresh from a strong re-election victory over the weekend, Erdogan may be willing to ease his objections to Sweden's membership. Erdogan accuses Sweden of being too soft on groups Ankara considers to be terrorists, and a series of Quran-burning protests in Stockholm angered his religious support base — making his tough stance even more popular. Kristersson said the two sides had been in contact since Sunday's vote and voiced no hesitancy in speaking about the benefits Sweden would bring to NATO "when we join the alliance." Blinken is in Sweden attending a meeting of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council and will travel to Oslo, Norway on Wednesday for a gathering of NATO foreign ministers, before going on to newly admitted alliance member Finland on Friday. Also Read: Erdogan says no support for Sweden's NATO bid Speaking in Oslo ahead of the foreign ministers' meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the goal was to have Sweden inside the grouping before the leaders' summit in July. "There are no guarantees, but it's absolutely possible to reach a solution and enable the decision on full membership for Sweden by the Vilnius summit," Stoltenberg said.